Cameron Diaz and James Marsden play a professional couple in the 1970s who have one child. They are supposedly intelligent, since Marsden is a NASA scientist (although he seems to spend his days making birthday presents for his wife) and Diaz teaches literature (although she foolishly allows herself to be goaded into showing a student her disfigured foot). The titular Box is delivered one morning at 5:44 a.m., which is a sure sign that it is evil, with a card that a Mr. Steward will call at 5 p.m. For some reason, Marsden does not make any attempt to be home at that point, leaving Diaz to greet this perfect stranger -- played by Frank Langella -- who has a distractingly large chunk of flesh missing from the side of his face. This is actually distracting in two ways: one, it is a terribly rendered computer effect; two, it is gross, and since there's a hole through which we can see his teeth, I kept expecting a river of drool to pour out. But I'm focusing on the wrong things.

The nevertheless impeccably speaking Langella explains to Diaz what The Box does: it gives you a million dollars, and it kills someone you don't know. Conveniencidentally, Diaz just found out that her private school was going to stop offering discounted tuition to the children of its teachers, and Marsden just found out he was turned down for the astronaut program. We are apparently supposed to believe that these are lifestyle-threatening financial setbacks, even though their son could always attend public school and Marsden could always accept the job his boss offers him, in his specialty, immediately after they find out the bad news. They could also sell their beautiful house in a gorgeous neighborhood, and maybe even sell Marsden's brand-new, silver Corvette Stingray. Diaz at one point admits that they like to spend money, but none of these curbing options are considered. No, murder is their only way out.

Given 24 hours to decide, Diaz and Marsden debate whether it's a bridesmaid prank for Diaz's sister's wedding, and Marsden even opens it up to see that it contains no transmitter or workings of any kind. While he scoffs that it could send any information to anybody, they both continue to believe that it will really work, and Diaz ultimately pushes the button. (Note that Diaz does it. The button is pushed three times in the movie, each time by the female half of a married couple, a fact pointed out by one of the husbands, which means writer-director Richard Kelly is either trying to say something about the structure of power in a marriage or the materialistic insecurities of women.) But Marsden has ignored the Arthur C. Clarke quote he has in poster form in his basement: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Langella turns up with the money, which Marsden of course no longer wants, but is forced to take. Later, they find out someone has in fact died -- right in their town, where Diaz's dad is police chief, allowing Marsden to not only see the crime scene, but run Langella's plate numbers, which is against the rules laid out with the money.

I won't summarize the rest of the plot, which involves Marsden and Diaz investigating Langella, and Langella in turn monitoring and further testing the couple, but the government is involved, as well as aliens, which would have been a nice reveal -- if it wasn't told to us in the opening title screen by an official memo connecting Langella's device and test with the recent Mars landing. I'm assuming that was added after a test screening where audiences expressed confusion at what was going on -- and I don't blame them. The movie is a muddled mess, where a grand conspiracy is revealed -- and even partially explained -- but the characters' actions are illogical and disjointed, and plot is sacrificed for cool images taken directly from Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the director's own Donnie Darko. The latter imagery, in particular, has me wondering if Kelly only had one good idea in him, and if maybe he should have worked on that S. Darko sequel after all.

If the movie had been less concerned with cause and effect and had just gone with the flow, maybe it would have been interesting to watch, without the noticeable gaps in story and logic and with more room for the crazy coincidences. But I can't believe anybody would greenlight this script, let alone one that explained even less. Also Diaz and Marsden's characters would still be amoral idiots, and Langella would still look ridiculous.